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AN APPROACH TO THE TEACHING OF PRONUNCIATION IN PRIMARY EDUCATION IN SPAIN Alejandro Nivela Herrero A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Primary Education Teacher Supervisor: Ignacio Domingo Baguer Faculty of Education University of Zaragoza June 2014 ABSTRACT The aim of this research study is mainly to introduce me to the world of research in English classroom, the main components that a research must have and the most relevant research methods. This work also presents an overview of the different methodologies prevailing in the teaching of English as a foreign language throughout the last two centuries and a description of the methodology that is commonly followed nowadays. It will also attempt a description of the most typical pronunciation problems that Spanish learners present by the time they learn English language. Finally, with the aim of conclude which method is the best to teach pronunciation, a research will be implemented in two groups of students of the same age. KEY WORDS: “Audio-lingual method”, “communicative method”, “history of the teaching of pronunciation”, “phonetics”, “pronunciation”, “pronunciation problems”. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 2. AN INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM .. 3 3. METHODS OF TEACHING PRONUNCIATION. A HISTORICAL APPROACH ................................................................................................................. 15 4. PRONUNCIATION PROBLEMS IN SPANISHSPEAKERS ......................... 25 5. WORKING HYPOTHESIS ................................................................................. 39 6. DESIGN OF ACTIVITIES .................................................................................. 46 6.1 Communicative method: .................................................................................... 46 6.2 Audio-lingual method: ........................................................................................ 48 7. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS .................................................................................... 49 8. CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................... 51 9. ANNEXES ............................................................................................................... 53 10. BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................. 62 1 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays one of the most difficult problems for English learners is learning pronunciation. It is commonly the biggest obstacle to overcome when trying to achieve fluency. It is not only important to study grammar and vocabulary but it is also essential to acquire a correct pronunciation. Moreover, knowing grammar and vocabulary is useless if someone is unable to pronounce them correctly. Pronunciation is the first thing that speakers notice during a conversation, and, speakers who make pronunciation mistakes are less likely to be understood than those who make grammatical mistakes. Even a single mispronounced word can keep you from an effective communication with another speaker. It is obvious, then, that pronunciation is important and cannot be underestimated and it must be one of the most important priorities when learning English. English teachers must give the same time and attention to pronunciation as they do to pronunciation and vocabulary. In teaching pronunciation the main goal is not acquiring a native-like pronunciation but it is to be comfortably intelligible, and this means that people understand what you are saying at the first time. The main goals related to pronunciation are: -Consistency: Pronunciation should become fluent and natural. -Intelligibility: Pronunciation should be understandable to the listeners. 2 -Communicative efficiency: Pronunciation should help convey the meaning intended by the speaker. The common way Spanish people pronounce English is characterised as being one of the worst all over the world. There are many reasons why we are considered to be one of the countries with the poorest English pronunciation. First of all in the curriculum, pronunciation rarely appears, teachers are not well prepared to teach pronunciation, they have not got a good pronunciation of English and, most of the time, they conduct their lessons in Spanish. It is also remarkable the lack of materials to work pronunciation and the time that teachers have to work it, they are more interested in teaching grammar and vocabulary than in teaching pronunciation. In this research work some solutions and strong points to work with pronunciation at school will be offered, and also a research study will be carried out with a 9-10 year old group of students to demonstrate which method is the best to teach pronunciation to young learners. 3 2. AN INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH IN THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM Second language learning is something that is all over the world because of a variety of reasons that Seliger and Shohamy (1989:22) comment: immigration, the demands of commerce and science, the requirements of the education, etc. This is the reason why the research in this field has become one of the most exciting frontiers of cognitive science. Research in second language must be carried out taking into account the following aspects: -The circumstances under which the research is conducted. For example the context, age and characteristics of the learners. -The methodology used in the research. The methodology depends on the philosophy of the researcher, the theory motivating the research, the conditions of the research and the question to be investigated. -The tools used to study the second language, such as observation, testing, interviews and instrumentation. Research in second language must be multifaced and multidisciplinary, it has to take into account knowledge and research methodologies from areas such as linguistics, anthropology, psychology, sociology, education, etc. Each of these areas provides the researcher with different perspectives, goals and tools for studying the phenomena of second language learning. 4 David Nunan (1992:2) comments that research involves rigour and the use of some determined knowledge and skills. In this book David Nunan presents the research that he undertook with some students. He asked them to explain the term “research”, and certain key terms related with research popped up: inquiry, knowledge, hypothesis, information, classification, analysis, interpretation, asking questions, structured investigation, problem, prove, theory, evaluation, demystify and solution. Taking all the terms together, research would mean “process of formulating questions, problems or hypotheses, collecting data or evidence relevant to these questions/problems/hypotheses, and analysing or interpreting these data”. David Nunan (1992:3) points out that the minimal definition of research could be that research is a systematic process of inquiry consisting of three elements or components: a question/problem/hypothesis, data and analysis and interpretation of data. Seliger and Shohamy (1989:2, 3) state that research is cyclical, it is an ongoing activity which has no end, it is never completed because each part of research makes additional questions for more research. Either the results take the investigator to related questions or the main question or hypothesis cannot be answered or confirmed and the research must begin again. The basic components of research are pointed out by Seliger and Shohamy (1989:7). According to them, these components can be found in everyday experiences. Those components are: 5 -There is a form of behaviour that is not clearly understood. -The behaviour is observed and found to be special for some reason. Questions start to be asked. -Several possible explanations for the unusual behaviour are sought and related in some way to previous knowledge or past events. -One of the possible explanations is considered to be the one that most probably explains the behaviour. -In order to test the hypothesis or answer, more data is needed. One important thing that research must deal with is how we know that we have found the correct answer to the questions. Seliger and Shohamy (1989:13) suggest that research findings in second language studies may be categorized according to four types of knowledge which these findings represent. Type 1 is “Knowledge as a belief”. It means that we know something on the basis of belief, we want to believe something to be true but we have not demonstrated it by an empirical test. The conclusions reached through common sense can be found in this category. Type 2 is “Knowledge as authority”. It is similar to type 1 because it is also accepted at face value. The source of this knowledge is a scientist who has a good reputation and whose opinions in a field are accepted from a respected researcher. 6 Type 3 is “A priori knowledge”. We arrive to this type of knowledge by starting with a set of axioms about a phenomenon and then, we develop our knowledge of it by using reason and logic working. This kind of knowledge is usually founded on some previous systematic empirical work or observation. It is very common starting with a priori knowledge in second language research. Type 4 is “Empirical Knowledge”. The main point of this type is arriving to the knowledge of something by observation and/or experimentation. What characterises this type of knowledge is interacting with the real world, observing phenomena and drawing conclusions from experience. But before starting with this one, it is necessary to start with one of the three types described above. In second language research this type must be pursued by a careful observation and description, also it also can be reached by experimentation, isolating a single factor for study. There is also a division that Daniel Madrid (2001:12) makes about different kinds of research according to the goal that we want to achieve: -Basic or theoretical research: This kind of research tries to build abstract theoretical models that explain the process of teaching and learning languages. -Applied research: It applies the different theoretical models that theoretical research provides to different fields of education. -Practical research: It makes a practical use of theoretical and applied research, it mix up both researches mentioned before. 13 of selectivity and intervention. The researcher observes and records what happens without attempting to interfere with the environment. Brown (1988) makes another analysis for characterising applied linguistic research. He is concerned with quantitative research and draws a distinction between primary and secondary research. Primary research is divided into case studies, which are centred on a single individual or limited number of individuals, documenting some aspect of their language development, usually over a period of time, and statistical studies, which consider a group of people as a cross section of possible behaviours at a particular point or at several distinct points in time. Brown also divides statistical studies into survey studies, investigate a group’s attitudes, opinions or characteristics through questionnaires, and experimental studies, control the conditions under which the behaviour under investigation is observed. As a conclusion, in this research work will be focused on the study of the pronunciation in Primary Education and following the ideas of Brown I will go through the lines of the statistical research focusing on the experimental one. My research work will be characterised by the practice, it will contain theoretical and applied research. Furthermore, the research work will have the purpose of describing some phenomena and behaviours that occur in the English classroom as a main resource of data which will be analysed in its contextual framework. Following the ethnographic research I will start formulating a hypothesis, developing a field work and analysing the data collected, to finishing by proving that the hypothesis was true or reformulating the initial proposal. 14 Always trying that the research work will keep the main conditions that Nunan claims, internal and external reliability, and internal and external validity. 15 3. METHODS OF TEACHING PRONUNCIATION. A HISTORICAL APPROACH In this part of this research work we will be consider a historical overview of how pronunciation has been dealt with in language teaching over the past one hundred years, and therefore the most meaningful teaching approaches and techniques that have been used will be examined. Kelly (2000:13) claims that vocabulary and grammar haven been studied much longer than pronunciation, that is why the teaching of grammar and vocabulary have been much better understood by most language teachers than the teaching of pronunciation, which began to be studied only a short time before the twentieth century began. Before the nineteenth century only the “Intuitive-Imitative Approach” was used, and sometimes this approach was supplemented by the teacher’s impressionistic observations about the sounds of the words written in the textbooks, and this impressions were mainly based on orthography. This approach depends on the learner’s ability to listen to and imitate the rhythms and sound of the target language without the intervention of any explicit information. The “Analytic-Linguistic approach” was developed to complement the “Intuitive-Imitative” method, and it was based on the idea that using information and tools such as phonetic alphabet, articulatory descriptions, charts of the vocal apparatus, contrastive information and so on would be enough to make students acquire a perfect pronunciation. It focuses the attention on the sounds and rhythms of the target language. 16 Throughout the twentieth century there were a few methods in which the teaching of pronunciation was irrelevant. In this regard, Celce-Murcia (2010:3) highlights the Grammar Translation and Reading-Based Approaches. In these methods grammar or text comprehension was taught through the medium of the learner’s native language, and oral communication was not the principal goal, and therefore it was not dealt with appropriately. There were, however, other methods which, according to CelceMurcia (2010:3) paid a proper attention to the teaching and learning of pronunciation: the direct method, the audio-lingual method, the oral approach, the cognitive approach, the silent way, community language learning and the communicative approach. As Celce-Murcia (2010:6) explains, the language teaching has changed positions many times with respect to the teaching of pronunciation. The “Direct Method” gained popularity between the 1800s and 1900s, in this method the pronunciation is taught through intuition and imitation, that is, the students imitate a model. It was based on observation: The students imitated what the teachers did. The successors of this approach called it “Naturalistic Method” and maintained the main initial methodology, which basically consisted in listening without much pressure to speak and imitating what the teachers said. The main idea behind this approach was that it gives the learners the opportunity to internalize the target sound system. In the 1890s a “Reform Movement” in language teaching, which contributed to the teaching of pronunciation, began. It was influenced by 17 phoneticians such as Henry Sweet and Paul Passy, who developed the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. The International Phonetic Alphabet resulted from the establishment of phonetics as a science dedicated to describe and analyse the sound systems of languages. This alphabet made possible to represent the sounds of any language visually and accurately. These phoneticians influenced modern language teaching by advocating some notions and practices: -The spoken form of a language is primary and should be taught first. -The findings of phonetics should be applied to language teaching. -Teachers must have solid training in phonetics. -Learners should be given phonetic training to establish good speech habits. This “Reform Movement” played a role in the development of “Audiolingualism” in the United States and of the “Oral Approach” in Britain during the 1940s and 1950s. In both of them pronunciation is very important and is taught from the beginning. Students also imitate and repeat what teachers say, but teachers also make use of information from phonetics such as visual transcription system or charts that demonstrate the articulation of sounds. One of the most common techniques used by teachers is the technique called “minimal-pair drill” which works with words that differ only by a single sound in the same place in both words. 18 This technique can be used for both listening practice and guided oral production. In the 1960s the “Cognitive Approach” appeared. This approach was influenced by transformational-generative grammar and cognitive psychology. In this approach grammar and vocabulary were considered to be more important than pronunciation mainly because of two principal reasons. The first was that a native pronunciation was an unrealistic objective to be reach and could not be achieved, and the second was that they preferred to teach more learnable objectives so that time would be better spent on teaching grammatical structures and words which were more reachable. In the 1970s the “Silent Way” and “Community Language Learning” were the methods that appeared and were important and relevant. The “Silent Way” method is characterised by the attention paid to accuracy of production of both the sounds and structures of the target language from the initial stage of instruction. Not only it is important the accuracy of individual sounds and how they are stressed, but also the way they combine phrases, how they blend, stress and how intonation is produced. The “Silent Way” approach let learners sharpen their own inner criteria for accurate production. Community Language Learning (CLL) was developed by Charles A. Curran (1976) for teaching second and foreign languages. CLL lessons start with the students sitting around a table with a tape recorder, the teacher asks one student to say something in his or her native language that the student wishes to be able to say in the target language. The teacher 19 translates it and provides the phrase, then the student repeats it a few times until the sentence can be produced fluently and it is recorded. Then the teacher writes a transcription of the student’s utterance and a translation. Following that the teacher plays again what he had recorded before and learners match the new language with the word-for-word translation provided by the teacher. Next, the teacher asks the students to make further practice. If they want to practice more, the teacher starts in the same way than before but engaging in a technique known as human computer (the teacher can be turned on or off when the student wants, and can request the correct pronunciation of a given phrase), and this lets the student repeat sentences until he or she is satisfied with the pronunciation. In the 1980s appeared a new method which was the dominant in language teaching, it is called Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) but it is also known as Communicative Approach. In this method the principal aim is the communication, it should be central in all classroom language instruction. This focus on communication claims renewed urgency to the teaching of pronunciation and avoiding oral communication problems. Intelligible pronunciation is one of the necessary components of oral communication, other component is the methodology, teachers ask themselves how they can improve the pronunciation of unintelligible speakers of English. Teachers answer this question by reviewing the kinds of techniques and practice materials that have traditionally been used and are still being used to teach pronunciation. The list of techniques is the following: Listen and imitate, phonetic training, minimal-pair drills, 20 contextualized minimal pairs, visual aids, tongue twister, developmental approximation drills, practise of vowel shifts and stress shifts related by affixation, reading aloud/recitation, recording of learners’ pronunciation. Before the appearance of the Communicative Language Teaching method, in the 1970s the Communicative approach began to take over most of the materials for teaching pronunciation were rejected because researchers thought they were incompatible with teaching language as communication. Then, materials developers and teachers began to search for more appropriate ways to teach pronunciation. They conclude that the optimal way to organize a pronunciation course for non-native speakers was teaching suprasegmental features of language for instance the rhythm, stress and intonation. Nowadays, the pronunciation instruction is moving away from the suprasegmental debate to a more balanced view. Today’s pronunciation curriculum tries to identify the most important aspects of both features (suprasegmentals and segmentals) and integrate them in courses that meet the need of any group of learners. In addition, there is also the issue of voice quality setting that is a certain number of stereotypical features such as pitch level, vowel space, neutral tongue position and degree of muscular activity which contribute to the overall sound quality associated with the language. Once one has to decide which accent to adopt to teach pronunciation, it is difficult to choose one of them because of the large number of varieties of English that can be found in the world. The standard for 21 teaching British English has been for a long time RP (it is the accent of British English commonly used in textbooks, it is called Received Pronunciation), but the goal should be an accent that is comprehensible by non-native speakers, leaving apart the native speakers. Jenny Jenkins (2000, 2002) proposed a syllabus for English pronunciation based on what the needs of non-native speakers of English are. Before choosing a model for teaching English, teachers must take into account a few aspects that Celce-Murcia (2010:279) highlights. One of the most important aspect is the learner’s speaking needs. As Wennerstrom (1992) said, learners are best motivated by pronunciation materials taken from their own personal situations. The more that learners can rehearse real-life language and situations, the more confident and motivated they will be. Another important aspect is the teaching context, and in this respect the teacher’s preparation is essential. Celce-Murcia (2010:280) writes that Murphy (1997) claims in his research that it is very important to make teachers be in contact with real teaching or tutoring while studying phonology, developing and making use of narratives written by teachers and learners of pronunciation. It is also important to receive training with technology related with teaching pronunciation, and being conscious of the current advances in language-teaching methodology and, finally, being prepared to investigate their learners’ actual speech intelligibility needs. English teachers must follow the official curriculum where they will find the importance of the pronunciation in English teaching, which is 22 different in each country and region. Pronunciation is not always included in the curriculum so teachers need to find ways to integrate it. The choice of textbooks is another aspect that must be taken into account. It can be determinative to the appearance of the pronunciation in the teaching situations. Another aspect that teachers must think about is the need to find ways to the record learners’ voices and provide listening models, so it is important that teachers have a variety of instructional technologies. Finally, two of the most important and determinative aspects are the number of learners per class (the more students in a class the less attention they will receive) and the time per week that is programmed to teach pronunciation. Teachers must try to work it by integrating it into every lesson. Celce Murcia (2010:283) mentions the priorities that Gilbert targeted for beginning learners in pronunciation. She emphasizes that pronunciation instruction should be integrated right from the start in order to avoid the kind of wrong pronunciation that will become harder to modify later on. Gilbert highlights seven priorities: -To work the basic vowels focusing on the sounds correspondences. -Consonants that serve as grammatical signals. -Linking between words. -The number of syllables. 29 Walker (2010:130) explains that there are numerous accents of Spanish, in Spain and also in South America. This situation has two advantages: First, English learners from Spanish countries are already aware of accent variation. Secondly, some English sounds do not exist in Castilian Spanish but can be found in regional accents, so they will be able to imitate specific sounds that they will need for learning English. Intelligibility is claimed by Kenworthy (1987:13) to be as the most important goal when pronunciation is taught. The definition that Kenworthy gives of this term is as follows: “Intelligibility is being understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation”. According to Kenworthy, teachers must set intelligibility as a goal, it is more important than having a native pronunciation. The aim of the foreign speakers should be being intelligible so that they can communicate a message (Kenworthy 1987:15). This term has also been used by others authors such as Smith and Nelson (1985) who affirms that intelligibility is the listener’s ability t o recognize words or utterances, and use comprehensibility to the ability to understand those words or utterances in their given context. There are many aspects that can affect a person’s intelligibility. Kenworthy (1987:14) points out several of them. To start with, he listeners will have problems to follow the speaker if they make self-corrections, hesitations and grammatical restructurings. Another factor will be the speed of the speech, although this is not a vital factor in intelligibility, because even if the speaker speaks fast you can pick up half of the words 30 in the message and get the meaning. Idiosyncratic speech habits can also affect intelligibility, since these habits can confuse a native listener. In English there are some consonants that can create confusion and affect intelligibility. Walker (2010:130) points out some of them, for example the confusion between /s/, /z/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, another example occurs with the sounds /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʒ/ and /j/. There are also a couple of factors that affect the listeners, because intelligibility presupposes a certain degree of linguistic competence on the participants. The first one is the familiarity with the foreign accent, this is the ability to understand a particular type of accent, and the second is the listener’s ability to use contextual clues when listening: this means that listeners can use clues from the others parts of the sentence to figure out a particular word. It must also be pointed out that there are some strategies that are commonly used when learning English, and there are a few problems that can appear when learners try these strategies. Kenworthy (1987:17) makes some comments the most typical pronunciation strategies which can lead to intelligibility problems: -Sounds substitutions: Difficulties can be found when the speaker substitutes one sound for another. There are a few substitutions that can be identified by the listener because the substituted sound it is close to the real one. It is also important for the listener the context in which it happens so that it will be easier to understand the meaning and avoid unintelligibility. 31 -Sounds deletions: These kind of problems appear when the speaker leaves out a sound at the beginning, middle or end of a word. -Sound insertions: Learners often tend to add sounds at the beginning or at the end of the words. -Links between words: It is also possible to find problems at the beginning and end of the words when one word follows another. In English there are several types of links between words. One of them is linking a sound: in English it is common to insert a letter between two words which makes it sound as only one. A sound merger is another kind of link: it happens when the final consonant of a word merges with the first consonant of the second one. And finally, a composite sound, which is what happens when a different consonant is used between two words to pronounce the two words faster. As Kenworthy (1987:18) says, if learners do not use these English features or if they use different ways of linking words, it will be really difficult for English listeners to properly identify the phrases. -The use of stress: In English syllables are perceived in a different way depending on, for example, the loudness and the length of the vowel. The learner must be aware of stressing one syllable more than another and trying not to stress the wrong syllable, because the listener may have problems to understand the word. 32 -The use of rhythm: The English language has a characteristic rhythm and listeners expect to hear it. Learners must take into account that English needs an alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, with the stressed syllables occurring on a regular beat. -The use of intonation: In English, listeners receive information from the pitch of the voice that the speaker produces. Intonation is an important weapon for intelligibility, because it is used to transmit intentions. Kenworthy (1987:98) comments that it is useful for teachers to know the sources and the causes of the spelling and pronunciation problems. Kenworthy summarises several possible causes of spelling difficulties among non-native learners: -Learners whose native language is based on the Roman alphabet: the problems may be caused by confusion between the sound of a particular letter in the native language and its value in English. -Learners whose native language uses a non-alphabetic system will have to adjust to alphabetic conventions. This is the case of Japanese and Arabic systems. -The English spelling system is another source of difficulties. English is an alphabetic system, it means that it is necessary to sort out which letter corresponds to which sound, but English is not a strictly regular alphabetic system where a letter always correspond to only one sound. Learners from Spain and Italy find this more 33 difficult because their written language is mostly phonetic, which means that each letter stands for one sound and almost always for the same sound. -The last one is the pronunciation of the learner. It is possible that the learner has difficulties in distinguishing English sounds, spelling in a correct way, misspelling of letters, etc. Kenworthy (1987:99) provides a list of spelling and pronunciation errors with the possible cause. In its list it is also possible to find out some of the mistakes that Spanish learners usually make: -Learners often insert a short vowel before (-st) clusters. For example Spanish learners pronounce /ʌndərəstænd/ instead of/ ʌndəstænd/. -The Spanish language has a /b/ sound which is written as “b” or “v” at the beginning of words and another sound which only occurs in the middle of words also written as “b” or “v”. For example Spanish learners tend to pronounce /vəˈkævjələri/instead of /vəˈkæbjələri/. -Spanish learners often confuse the sound /æ/ with the sound /ɛ/. For example they pronounce /lɜŋgwɪdʒ/ instead of /læŋgwɪdʒ/. Kenworthy (1987:153) focuses on the differences between the pronunciation of English and the pronunciation of Spanish, and describe the problems that learners tend to have. 34 Each language uses a certain number of sounds called phonemes which let people distinguish words and morphemes from one another (Cook (2001:69)). A phoneme is a sound which is used to distinguish meanings in a particular language. The problem for second language acquisition is that each language has its own set of phonemes, and the English system is not easy at all because there are more sounds than letters and this makes it quite difficult to learn. Wilfried Wieden and William Nemser (1991) carried out a research which showed the importance of transference from one language to another in acquiring pronunciation. It is not about transferring a single phoneme from Spanish language to English, learners must notice that each language has it owns phonemic characteristics. It has been demonstrated that some of the learners’ pronunciation rules are related to their first language, which makes a unique temporary system. Spanish learners have several problems with: -Consonants: -The confusion between /b/ and /v/ that I have explained above. -/d/ may be too close to /ð/. The word “day” /deɪ/ can sound like “they” /ðeɪ/. -/θ/ is absent in some varieties of Spanish, it happens for example with the word “thin” / θɪn/. Sometimes it is replaced for /f/ or /s/. 35 -/ʃ/ it does not occur in many varieties. For example with the word “shoe” /ʃuː/. -/dʒ/ and /ʒ/ are unfamiliar sounds, and learners will tend to substitute them by the letter “y” in Spanish. The same will happen with /j/, it will be replaced by the letter “y”. -/w/ learners will pronounce it as a /b/ or they may put a /g/ before the sound. As happens with the word “wet” /wet/. -/h/ learners will delete it or pronounce it with a whistle. There could be some confusion between /h/ and /dʒ/. Sometimes the word “ham” /hæm/ sounds like “jam” /dʒæm/. -/r/ Spanish learners will replace it for a drill or /d/ it is acceptable but it sounds foreign. -/ŋ/ it will only make problems when it appears at the end of words, the learner will end with a consonant cluster or will disappear the sound /ŋ/ of the end of the word (which will make more problems to recognise the word). -Consonant clusters and sequences: Spanish and English share many clusters, so learners cope quite well but when the English cluster contains an unfamiliar sound: -Two and three element clusters beginning with /s/. Learners may insert a vowel before the /s/. With the word “small” learners may add a vowel before “a-small”. 36 -Learners will tend to add /s/ for plural, even when the /z/ is required. -Final consonant clusters with /s/ do not usually create problem. But sometimes speakers may delete the final /s/. -Final consonant clusters with /t/ and /d/ are problematic. Learners may delete them or insert a vowel between the last two consonants. -The combination /s/ plus consonant plus /s/ is a difficult one. Normally, speakers delete one of the two /s/’s. Like the words “nests” /nests/ and “risks” /rɪsks/. -Word stress: One difficulty that Spanish speakers usually find is placing the stress on the right syllable in compound words and in the adjective plus noun combination. The Spanish language have no equivalent structures. Word order is used in Spanish to achieve what is accomplished by stress placement in English. -Sentence stress: There is a difference between English and Spanish speech with regard to sentence stress, and because of this many meanings which are conveyed in English through sentence stress are conveyed in Spanish through particular words. -Intonation: There are three areas that need attention: -Pitch range: Spanish speakers use a too narrow pitch range, they keep a very restricted pitch movement over a phrase or clause. 37 -Final falling pitch movement: It may not sound low enough. This is because Spanish speakers rarely use a slight rise before the final falling pitch, which makes the final pitch movement sound too flat. -The rise-fall seems difficult: This is because the pitch-reversal by itself is hard for learners to do, especially on short phrases or one syllable or because of shyness or self-consciousness. -Problems with vowels: -/ei/-/ɛ/ there is often a confusion between these two sounds. Teachers must encourage learners to use lip spreading for /ei/. For example with “ages” /eɪdʒs/ and “edges” /ɛdʒs/. -/ʌ/ it does not exist in Spanish but it is similar to the sound “a” in Spanish. Like in “must” /mʌst/ or “but” /bʌt/. -/ɪ/-/i/ there is also a confusion between these sounds. Learners will tend to use the latter for both vowels. For example with the words “bit” /bɪt/ and “beat” /bit/. -/u/-/ʊ/ learners will not difference them and they will tend to use more the first sound than the second one. One example of this confusion is “boot” /but/ and “book“/bʊk/. -/ə/ it does not occur in Spanish. English learners will substitute the vowel suggested by the spelling. 38 -In Spanish vowels there is no variation in length, so learners will tend to make vowels equally long, which will be too short for the English native listener. Teacher must try to give learners a general recommendation to lengthen vowels. 45 “Bugs World”, this book shows the English language contextualised in engaging stories taken from the pupils’ world and interests. The book also offers many opportunities for children to communicate in English. It also works on pronunciation, in each unit a phoneme is worked upon by showing a few words that contain it and a sentence with that words, pupils listen to it and repeat the words and the sentence. 46 6. DESIGN OF ACTIVITIES 6.1 Communicative method: Words introduction: The lesson with this group will start showing a few words in the board (which contain the target sounds) that they will use later in different activities. I will point out the differences between the sounds and I will also explain how to make the sound with the mouth and voice. Pupils will have a few minutes to practice these sounds. Phonemic bingo: Each pupil will receive a bingo card with 6 words that contains the target phonemes. Then, pupils will listen to words with the target sounds. Pupils will have to recognise them and cross out the words that they have in their cards. Memory game: In this game the class will be divided in groups of four pupils. Each group will receive a set of cards to play memory game. They will have to look for the word and its pronunciation. They will play in turns, if one pupil find out a pair he or she will keep both cards and will continue looking for more. The pupil that at the end of the game will have more pairs of cards will be the winner. 47 Stand up: Each pupil will receive a list with four words containing the same sound. Teacher will pronounce one word and pupils will have to recognise the sound and guess if they have it in their list, if they have it they will have to stand up. Phonemic crossword: Teacher will display a crossword in the screen with words hidden, they will have as a help the words written with the phonemes that they are learning. Hands up game: The classroom will be divided in two teams, then teacher will say a word and they will have some time to think how to write it, then one of the team will stand up and will write it on the board, if they do it well the team will receive a point. Tongue-Twister: Each pupil will receive one tongue-twister which contains one target sound, teacher will let some time to read it, and then the pupil will stand up and read it with a good pronunciation. After reading it, pupils have to guess the sound that they have heard. Which sound am I? Each pupil will receive one posit with a sound. Pupils will have to discover which sound they have by asking to others “which sound am I? ”. 48 Pupils will answer using the words that they have been working during the lesson. 6.2 Audio-lingual method: Pupils will receive a sheet of paper with a number of activities that they will do during the class. First teacher will make a short introduction writing words with the four phonemes that they will work later. Then teacher will start doing the same exercises that are showed below for both pairs of phonemes: -Pupils will listen to the different sounds and they will repeat them a couple of times to interiorise which is the way to make the sound properly. -Pupils will listen to some words and sentences that contain these sound and then they will have to repeat it one by one. -Pupils will make a few activities in order to distinguish each phoneme of the minimal pair. -Pupils will have to fill a chart with the four phonemes with a list of words that contain the sounds worked before. 49 7. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS This research study has been developed in two different classrooms of 4th year of Primary Education. One group was taught the target phonemes with an “Audio-lingual” approach and the other group through a “Communicative method”. Once both groups were taught the target phonemes, they took a dictation which included words with the phonemes worked in class. The results of the dictation were the following: AUDIO-LINGUAL GROUP MISTAKES COMMUNICATIVE GROUP MISTAKES /ʌ/ 46 25 /æ/ 14 8 /ɜː/ 8 2 /e/ 3 1 In this grid we can see the number of mistakes that each group made with the words of the dictation. The results show that with the sound /ʌ/ pupils of the “Audio-lingual” group made 46 mistakes as a whole. This sound was the most problematic for pupils, most of the pupils had problems with the words “truck” and “hut”, and they wrote instead “track” and “hat”. There is a difference between the mistakes made by the two groups: it can be observed that the “Communicative” group made less mistakes than the “Audio-lingual” group. It has been observed how effective the “communicative method” is in Primary Education classrooms through the results achieved with the 50 programming and implementation of a couple of lessons with a group of pupils, which were better than the ones obtained in the group that received these lessons following an audio-linguistic approach. The results obtained with the “communicative method” are determined by the motivation and participation of pupils to develop the proposed activities related with the pronunciation of the problematic phonemes. 51 8. CONCLUSIONS Along this research study the more relevant methods of the teaching of pronunciation through history have been studied and analysed in order to demonstrate the reasons why English pronunciation of Spanish people has always been worse than in other countries. Due to this situation a new approach to teaching pronunciation is appearing and gaining in importance, it is called “communicative method”. This approach is based on a change in the way of teaching pronunciation which aims a developing a communicative competence of pupils by making use of real-life situations and learning by doing. Furthermore, teaching English by using this method will make pupils receive an instruction that satisfies their needs. It provides pupils with a wide range of abilities such as a linguistic competence, a sociolinguistic competence, a discourse competence and a strategic competence, all of them highly important to live in the current society. These abilities that the “Communicative method” provides pupils are the reason why it is necessary to remove and fix the weaknesses of the other methods of teaching English which are based on aspects that at present are not useful for pupils. Thereby, it can be assumed that teaching English pronunciation through the “Communicative method” is not only beneficial for aspects related with the pronunciation of sounds, but it is also important to encourage pupils’ motivation to participate in English lessons and practice the target sounds through games and interactive tasks. 52 It must also be highlighted that there are difficulties and barriers that imply, for teachers and also learners that they have to change and modify an established methodology and a way to work in class which have been common in schools for many decades now. Teachers must acknowledge the need of reflect, upgrade and act in order to improve the language teaching for future pupils, adapting this methodology to the needs of every moment. It can be asserted that teachers must be constantly researching about how they can adapt the methodology of teaching languages to the pupils’ needs and level, which are continually changing. Finally, this research study has demonstrated that the “communicative method” is effective and viable to be implemented in Primary Education. Teachers must take into account the benefits that this method brings in teaching English in Primary Education and take steps to ensure that all English teachers start considering this method as the main one in the process of teaching the English language in Primary Education. 53 9. ANNEXES 1. Diagnostic test: 1. Fit-feet 2. Did-deed 3. Dead-did 4. Desk-disk 5. Get-gate 6. Wet-wait 7. Cat-cut 8. Cap-cup 9. Bowl-ball 10. Know-nor 11. Not-note 12. Want-won’t 13. Can-ken 14. Bag-beg 15. Fast-first 16. Guard-gird 54 2. Audio-lingual lesson: Name: __________________________________ Class: ______________ 1. Listen and practise the sound /æ/. 2. Listen and practise the sound /ʌ/. 3. Listen and repeat both sounds /æ/ y /ʌ/. 4. Look at the screen, listen and repeat the words. 5. Listen and write 1 (if you hear sound /æ/) or 2 (if you hear sound /ʌ/). a. d. b. e. c. f. 6. Look at the screen and listen to the sentences. 7. Listen and write 1 (if you hear sound /æ/) or 2 (if you hear sound /ʌ/). a. d. b. e. c. f. 8. Circle the word that you hear in the sentences: 1. Cap-Cup 4. Mad-Mud 2. Hat-Hut 5. Hang-Hung 3. Bag-Bug 6. Ran-run 9. Listen and repeat the words (sounds /e/ and /ɜː/). 10. Listen and write 1 (if you hear sound /e/) or 2 (if you hear sound /ɜː/). a. c. b. d. 11. Look at the screen and listen to the sentences. 12. Listen to the sentences and write which sound you hear (/e/ or /ɜː/). a. b. c. d. 61 9. Dictation exam: Ben is a man, he is ten years old. He lives in a hut in the west of Canada. His father is Brad and he has a truck. Ben and Brad have a bird in their hut and it only eats bread. Bert is Ben’s uncle and he has a black hat and he also has a big cup in a bag. Next to the hut there is a track with a lot of cats. 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